randfather was colonel
of the 43rd Regiment, which he commanded at the battle of Vittoria in
the Peninsular War. He married Elizabeth Holmes, member of a family
distinguished in Irish legal and literary circles. To her children she
bequeathed musical and artistic gifts of no mean order. From his father
Lafcadio inherited a remarkable aptitude for drawing, and, as is easy to
see from his letters to Krehbiel, an ardent love of music.

Elizabeth Holmes's second son, Richard Holmes Hearn, insisted while
quite a boy on setting forth to study art in the studios in Paris. He
never made money or a great name, but some of his pictures, inspired by
the genius of Corot and Millet, are very suggestive and beautiful. He
was quite as unconventional in his mode of thought, and quite as erratic
and unbusinesslike as his famous nephew--"Veritable blunderers," as
Lafcadio says, "in the ways of the world."

Writing from Japan to his half-sister, Mrs. Atkinson, about some
photographs she had sent him of her children, he says: "They seem to
represent new types; that makes no difference in one sense and a good
deal of difference in another. I think, though I am not sure, as I have
never known you or the other half-sister, that we Hearns all lacked
something. The something is very much lacking in me, and in my brother.
I mean 'force' ... I think we of father's blood are all a little soft of
soul ... very sweet in a woman, not so good in a man. What you call the
'strange mixture of weakness and firmness' is essentially me; my
firmness takes the shape of an unconquerable resistance in particular
directions--guided by feeling mostly, and not always in the directions
most suited to my interests. There must have been very strong
characteristics in father's inheritance to have made so strong a
resemblance in his children by two different mothers--and I want so much
to find out if the resemblance is also psychological."

Charles Bush Hearn, Lafcadio's father, elected to enter the army, as his
father and grandfather had done before him. According to Hart's "Army
List" he joined the 45th Nottinghamshire Regiment of Foot as assistant
surgeon on April 15th, 1842. In the year 1846 he was sent on the Medical
Staff to Corfu. The revolutionary spirit which swept over Europe in 1849
infected the Ionian Islands as well as the mainland of Greece. At
Cephalonia they nominated a regent of their own nationality, and
strenuous efforts were made to shake off the